News Advisory

Contact: Kani Xulam, 202.483.6444

January 16, 2003

Kurdish American Group Opposes War

Urges Prosecution of War Criminal Saddam Hussein

WASHINGTON, DC - Kurdish Americans will join with peace activists from across the nation this Saturday, January 18th, to protest the coming war with Iraq and urge the United Nations to declare Saddam Hussein a war criminal, paving the way for his prosecution in the Hague.  The demonstration will take place on the west side of the U.S. Capitol.

Their banner will read:

Bush Trumpets Dead Kurds for Oil War

Saddam loves Kurds like Osama Loves Americans

Free Kurdistan Now! www.kurdistan.org

WHO: Kurdish Americans and their friends

WHAT: Peace Rally

WHEN: Saturday, January 18, 2003, at 11 AM

WHERE: West Side of the Capitol Building, March on the Washington DC Navy Yard

"This war against Iraq supposedly comes on the heels of 9/11 as a service to the memory of those who met violent ends in New York, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon as well as a precaution that such a thing will never happen again.

“Osama Bin Laden and his disciples were mostly fostered in a tyranny, Saudi Arabia, and later found refuge in another one, Afghanistan, that practiced enforced ignorance.  If and when this war comes to Iraq -- another tyranny, to be sure -- a puppet dictator of Washington’s choice, not the citizens’, will be lodged in the presidential places of Saddam Hussein.  The antidote of tyranny is not, however, another form of tyranny, but freedom and liberty.  So far, for example, no one in the Bush administration has stood up for the inalienable right of the Kurds to self-determination, a better indicator of Washington’s desire to fight despotism.  This war, sadly, will not be a service to dead of 9/11, nor a precaution against further attacks in the future, but will bring in its wake death and destruction that will poison the future relations of the peoples who call the Occident and the Middle East their homes.  Freedom can come faster to the country if the United States and the world community support the indigenous democratic forces such as the Kurds.  That requires boldness and vision that senior Bush lacked in the course of the First Gulf War and the junior seems to not betray, so far at least, in the course of the second,” said Kani Xulam of the American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN)